1. Field of the Invention
The present general inventive concept relates to an array-type image forming apparatus and a method to compensate an image using the same. More particularly, the present general inventive concept relates to an array-type image forming apparatus which compensates an image by changing a fire strobe pulse of power which is necessary to drive nozzles of a print head, and a method to compensate an image during its formation.
2. Description of the Related Art
An array-type image forming apparatus sprays droplets of ink onto a sheet of paper using nozzles on a print head having a width greater than that of the paper. There are diverse manners of spraying ink using nozzles, among which the most widely employed method consists of heating the nozzles of the print head. The print head sprays ink onto a sheet of paper corresponding to a print command signal by selectively driving a switching element and a heater according to the print command signal output from the array-type image forming apparatus. The print head mounted on an ink cartridge includes a plurality of head chips having a plurality of nozzles. If the image forming apparatus supports color images, the head chip includes nozzles for cyan, magenta, yellow, and black.
The plurality of head chips is temperature-sensitive. If the conventional array-type image forming apparatus continues printing, the plurality of nozzles of each head chip is heated to spray ink, so due to heat, an image may become degraded and image density may change. For example, referring to FIG. 1A, when an image having the same single pattern is printed, if dot A on the first printed line is compared with dot B on the last printed line, dot B increases in density from d to d′. In addition, referring to FIG. 1B, if dot C in an area having high image density is compared with dot D in an area having comparatively low image density, dot C is printed larger than dot D since the temperature of the head chip changes, and thus the size of dots changes when spraying ink onto the area having a high image density.